Meeting Abstracts: Select & Consult

FT Rheology, a Tool to Quantify Long Chain Branching in Natural Rubber and its Effects on Mastication, Mixing Behaviour and Final Properties

Wilfried Emunds and Henri Burhin, Alpha Technologies

FT-Rheology has been proven to be a very sensitive tool for LCB quantification in polyolefins and commercially available elastomers such as EPDM's and BR's. This technique has been extended to NR gums from different origins. Large differences in LCB content have been measured on NR's from different countries as well of different plantations from the same country. These NR's with different LCB level have been mixed with Carbon Blacks (CB). It has been found the CB incorporation time depends more on LCB content than on viscosity. Higher level of LCB provides faster CB incorporation, consistent with previous knowledge for synthetic rubbers. In addition, it was shown that mastication can increase NR gums LCB content depending upon NR type although it decreases viscosity for all types.
Mixing various origin NR